Lots of folks who should buy it, won’t buy it. They have problem you can solve. But instead of fixing it, they’ll stick with the poor system they already have.

Others won’t buy your solution because they’ve never heard of you. Or they’ve found another option that fits their needs, and they feel there’s no need to look any further.

There are even some prospects that do know you and they do see that your solution would help them… but they just won’t get around to buying.

These people have visited your website, opened your emails, read your white papers, sat through a demo, even talked with your sales people about pricing. They’ve been in your pipeline for 90 days, 180 days, maybe a full year, but they’ve still not converted into paying customers.

You might figure that these prospects have gone missing. Despite all you’ve been through with them, no way, no how will they ever buy.

But you may be wrong about that. Perhaps they’re not truly gone; they’re just hibernating.

Reviving the hibernating prospects

Which is to say that with a bit of effort, some of them can be revived.

For some of these hibernating prospects, other priorities interrupted them. While they may have been eagerly evaluating your solution six months ago, more important issues got in the way. (See “Your prospect has a day job.”)

At some point, whatever it is that prompted them to look at your solution in the first place may make its way to the top of their to-do list once again.

Your job as marketers is to be sure that you and your solution are still in front of that prospect when that time comes. When they get around to focusing again on the problem, and they start to think about a solution, you want to be top-of-mind.

Even better, you can do your part to push your solution higher up on the priorities list. Make it clear to the prospect that the problem they’re living with deserves urgent attention and there’s a cost to ignoring it or pushing it to the back-burner.

Every day they put off solving it is costly to their organization: wasted money, lost time, added risk, lost opportunities, and other bad outcomes. (See “Your toughest competitor…inertia.”)

Be smart about the cost

Of course, you want to be careful about the costs of these efforts to revive hibernating prospects. Using sales professionals to stay in touch can be expensive.

But offering them educational papers, inviting them to webinars, or showing them customer success stories can keep you on the prospect’s radar screen. And the cost of keeping them on an email list is very low.

These communications should provide an easy way for the prospects to tell you they’re ready to re-engage. And of course, you should also offer them an easy way to unsubscribe if they’re truly done with you.

Bottom line: Don’t assume that prospects that you’ve not heard from in weeks, even months have gone completely cold. They may just need a bit of attention and some heat to warm them up.

SaaS Marketing Strategy Advisors

SaaS Marketing Strategy Advisors helps software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies acquire and retain customers. We have worked with SaaS companies to develop a compelling value proposition and messaging, a cost-effective customer acquisition plan, and consistent marketing materials. Our clients include younger firms that need a solid marketing foundation and more established firms that need to enhance their existing customer acquisition process.

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